THE ORIGINAL, NATURE, PROPERTY AND USE OF THE LAW.
Rom. vii. 12.
Wherefore the law is holy, and the commandment holy and just and good.
1. Perhaps there are few subjects within
the whole compass of religion, so little
understood as this. The reader of this epistle is
usually told, by the law, St. Paul means Jewish
law: and so apprehending himself to have no
concern therewith, passes on without farther
thought about it. Indeed some are not satisfied
with this account: but observing the epistle is
directed to the Romans, thence infer, that the
apostle in the beginning of this chapter, alludes
to the old Roman law. But as they have no more
concern with this, than with the ceremonial law
of Moses, so they spend not much thought, on
what they suppose is occasionally mentioned,
barely to illustrate another thing.
2. But a careful observer of the apostle's discourse, will not be content with these slight explications of it. And the more he weighs the
